Bob and Mary Schindler, and the pro-life community, were unprepared for the fight to save Terri. They did not then understand what they were up against. Today, the Schindlers, through their newly reorganized Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation are working to educate people on these issues. They are working with right-to-life organizations to promote and lobby for legislation that would offer greater protection to those whom some in our society would deem unworthy of continued life. They, and many others, are working to create a network of doctors, lawyers, and clergy who are knowledgeable about the legal, medical, and moral issues involved in end-of-life cases and who can be trusted to approach them from a "reverence for life" point of view.

It is clear now that the battle to protect the lives of people like Terri is best won at the very outset - by amassing the best scientific and medical evidence to support the position that even lives that seem profoundly limited are nonetheless worthwhile and human. Ultimately, this is a battle for people's hearts and minds: Once people understand that there is hope in life, even when that life is limited or entails suffering, they will be unwilling to embrace death as a solution to problems.

Unsurprisingly, the Dutch, ever prickly about international criticism of their peculiar institution, were outraged. Giovanardi's critique cut so deeply that even Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende felt the need to respond, sniffing, "This [Giovanardi's assertion] is scandalous and unacceptable. This is not the way to get along in Europe."

As is often the case in the New Europe, what is said matters more than what is done. Thus, the prime minister of the Netherlands thinks that killing babies because they are born with terminal or seriously disabling conditions is not a scandal, but daring to point out accurately that German doctors did the same during World War II, is.

That being noted, one wishes Giovanardi had thought twice before raising the Nazi specter. Partly, this is because nothing we are talking about today matches the scope or magnitude of Nazi crimes. As a result, accusing people of Nazi-like behavior allows those amply deserving of moral condemnation to deflect reproaches. Thus, Giovanardi says that killing disabled babies is what the Nazis did, and the Dutch merely retort (correctly) that they are not Nazis.

Still, the "Nazi" analogy is worth exploring, precisely because it is unequivocally true that German doctors did kill thousands of disabled babies, for which a few such physicians were hanged at Nuremberg. Dutch apologists know this, of course. But they claim that the Netherlands' infant euthanasia program is substantially different: Dutch doctors are motivated by compassion whereas the Germans' were motivated by the bigotry of racial hygiene. Of course it is the act of killing disabled and dying babies that is wrong, not the motivation. But even leaving that aside, the Dutch defense is not as persuasive as Prime Minister Balkenende would like to believe.

Rep. Chris Smith (R.-N.J.), co-chairman of the Pro-Life Caucus in the House of Representatives, along with seven other House Republicans, GOP Reps. Roscoe Bartlett (Md.), Joe Pitts (Pa.), Mike Pence (Ind.), Phil Gingrey (Ga.), Trent Franks (Ariz.), Jeff Fortenberry (Neb.) and Jean Schmidt (Ohio) stood with Smith at a press conference today to demand the House take action and vote on "Holly's law" (H.R. 1079) -- a bill authored by Bartlett that would suspend FDA approval of RU-486.

"Sadly, the tragic and preventable deaths of these two women remind us that not only is RU-486 used to kill babies, it is a poison that continues to harm women," said Smith at today's Capitol Hill press conference. "Even proponents of RU-486, such as Planned Parenthood, have recognized the danger that it has caused to women. How many deaths, investigations and warnings will it take before RU-486 is properly labeled as lethal and removed from the market?"

Holly's law was named for 18-year-old Holly Patterson who died Sept. 17, 2003 from septic shock as a result of taking RU-486, according to the coroner's report.

Major research firms and universities in America, Canada, and England have arrived at the same conclusion as the new study reported in the Australian Sydney Morning Herald, that "daycare damages babies' brain chemistry and affects their social and emotional development."

It was reported, "significant among the reams of research are the so-called cortisol studies, which measured the presence of stress hormones in young babies -- consistently finding levels to be higher in children in long hours of day care." Children in daycares and preschools are not developing properly, and equally as troubling, in later public schooling.

A 31 year old British mother put off treatment for leukemia when her diagnosis and eagerly-awaited third pregnancy were confirmed on the same day in 2004. The BBC reports that Sarah Peck of Plymouth, was diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) .

Mrs. Peck said it was their haematologist's agreement to manage the pregnancy that turned their decision away from abortion, or "termination" as it is called in England. "It's because he agreed to manage the pregnancy that we decided to go ahead," she said.

The Pecks were informed, however, that delay could cause difficulties in treating Sarah’s illness. Dr. Simon Rule, a consultant haematologist at Plymouth's Derriford Hospital, said, "If you delay (treatments) then the risk you run is that it can become acute at any time."

After the birth of baby Charlotte 19 March 2005, Sarah was treated with bone marrow stem cells from her sister, Vicky. This week, while the Peck's celebrated Charlotte's first birthday, Sarah was informed that she was in the final five picks for the Daily Mail's Mother of the Year award.

Sarah was informed a month ago that her illness is in remission. She told the BBC, "What I am really looking forward to now is spending quality time with my children. My family has always come first but now even more so. Every day is a gift now."

... there is absolutely nothing beautiful about abortion. Aside from the tragedy of a poor child who will someday read terrible headlines about a father who went to great lengths to make clear he wanted nothing to do with her..

McCreary has been a doctor long enough to remember the time when abortion wasn't legal for women. She says, "I saw some of them in my private practice, women who had illegal abortions that had infertility as a result."

What she saw, she says, wasn't pretty. She says, "They would have an illegal abortion and get an infection and then be unable to have children because of the infection and the scarring of the tubes. So if they didn't die, they at least had infertility."

Those women are why today, with abortion now legal, McCreary is willing to travel hundreds of miles, three times a month, to provide services for the women of South Dakota. She says, "An unwanted pregnancy can be a disaster for a woman. There are so many reasons why women want to have a pregnancy terminated."

For half of the women she sees at Planned Parenthood, the pregnancy is the unintended result of failed birth control. For others, financial or lifestyle issues bring them to the clinic. She adds, "We always tell women that adoption is an option for them. We ask them if they would like to consider that option. We don't see very many who do."

South Dakota has already passed an abortion ban. Now, Tennessee is considering a similar ban of its own.

There is nothing further in the email explaining the particulars of this Tennessee abortion "ban." That's because, strangely enough, no such proposed ban exists.

The situation here in Tennessee is as follows: the Supreme Court of Tennessee has ruled that the Tennessee Constitution also includes the right to an abortion (in point of fact, they went out of their way to declare that the Tennessee Constitution protects a "greater" right to an abortion than does the United States Constitution. I can't fathom how that would be possible, unless they are referring to the Peter Singer view, which allows abortion into the seventh trimester, but that's what they said.) The proposed measure on the table in Tennessee is actually an amendment to the state Constitution which simply says that the State Constitution does not, in fact, contain such a right. There is nothing in the language of the proposed amendment which would ban a single abortion.

Another reason NARAL may not have been keen to talk about the details of this proposed abortion "ban" is that the procedure for amending the state Constitution is amazingly convoluted, and requires quite a stretch of time. If I understand the process correctly (and I am open to being corrected on the details), if the measure passes the House Committe, and then 2/3 of both chambers, it will be placed on a referendum for the voters of Tennessee to consider in 2010. Truly, the Dark Night of Fascism™ is imminent in Tennessee.

The ads, depicting a 19-week-old fetus with the caption "this is a child not a choice" and offering the phone number of a local crisis pregnancy centre, were defaced with black spray-paint. The phone number was blotted out and the word "CHOICE" was sprawled over the ad.

Patient trials of a drug that is used in higher doses to cause abortions have shown it to be an effective contraceptive with few side-effects, and animal and cell models have even suggested that it can protect against breast tumours.

Women taking the new Pill, which contains no female hormones, would have no periods and would thus be unlikely to suffer from pre-menstrual syndrome (PMS). The contraceptive is also thought to carry a lower risk of blood clots than existing varieties.

Mike packed away years of newspaper clippings, magazine articles, documents and letters about Terri in two huge plastic bins. They sit in the garage, alongside an old dining room table and outdated toys.

He said he will pull the boxes out one day when his children are old enough to hear about Terri. He hopes they will be proud.

If men want reproductive rights, the right they should be given is the option to raise their child even if the mother wants to prevent her child from ever being born. Abortion rights activists often say it is their goal to make abortions a "safe, rare, and legal" option, but oppose any measure to make the procedure rare. If fathers are willing to raise their child, they should have full rights under the law to do so and prevent the mother from going ahead with an abortion. Fathers should be notified and have to give consent to an abortion.

If the National Center for Men wants to stand up and be men, then this is the reproductive right that they should be standing up for. Men should have the right to be able to stop the unwanted abortion of their child by the mother who is seeking to avoid the "inconvenience" of parenthood.

The myth that Roe v. Wade made abortion safer for women is unraveling. Before abortion became a choice it was a criminal enterprise and abusers were jailed. It's still a criminal enterprise, but the butchers are protected, medical incompetence is rampant and abuses are hard to track down. The consequences of the Roe decision are 47 million dead babies and countless women dead, injured and emotionally scarred. That's a choice nobody should support.

Liberal columnist Nat Henthoff says that media polls about Terri Schiavo are meaningless because the media has not presented the whole truth about Terri's situation.

"[H]ow many Americans knew from the polls that her husband who provided hearsay "evidence" of her wishes, corroborated only by his brother and sister-in-law," he said.

"The polls, which so confused so many millions about Terri Schiavo's actual quality of life and her further potential, are by no means the only polls that have misinformed Americans on a wide range of vital public issues," Henthoff added.

Kentucky lawmakers voted against an amendment to an informed consent bill that would have banned all abortions except those in rare cases to save the life of the mother. The state Senate voted against the amendment, which would have been attached to House Bill 585, that would strengthen the state's Right to Know law. That law allows women to get information from an abortion center about abortion's risks and alternatives that they might not ordinarily receive beforehand. The measure would make sure women thinking of having an abortion got the information in person beforehand and women who need to sign a form documenting they were given the information. The Senate approved the Right to Know changes on a 33-4 vote and Gov. Ernie Fletcher plans to sign the bill. Margie Montgomery, executive director of the Kentucky Right to Life Association, told the Louisville newspaper the bill could "cut down a large percentage of abortions."

Two Alabama legislators have introduced bills that would ban almost all abortions in the state, except those performed to save women's lives.

The bills are similar to legislation banning abortion that passed in South Dakota.

"I thought if South Dakota can do it, Alabama ought to do it, because we are a family-friendly state," said state Sen. Hank Erwin, R-Montevallo, who has introduced a bill in the Senate that would even ban abortions in cases where a woman became pregnant because of rape or incest.

A similar bill has been introduced in the House by Rep. Nick Williams, R-McIntosh. The bills would make it a felony crime to perform abortions in Alabama.

Fr. Frank has an open letter to Michael Schiavo. The letter will be read to a worldwide audience on an internationally broadcast religious service on Sunday morning, March 26:

Dear Michael,

A year ago this week, I stood by the bedside of the woman you married and promised to love in good times and bad, in sickness and health. She was enduring a very bad time, because she hadn't been given food or drink in nearly two weeks. And you were the one insisting that she continue to be deprived of food and water, right up to her death. I watched her face for hours on end, right up to moments before her last breath. Her death was not peaceful, nor was it beautiful. If you saw her too, and noticed what her eyes were doing, you know that to describe her last agony as peaceful is a lie.

This week, tens of millions of Americans will remember those agonizing days last year, and will scratch their heads trying to figure out why you didn't simply let Terri's mom, dad, and siblings take care of her, as they were willing to do. They offered you, again and again, the option to simply let them care for Terri, without asking anything of you. But you refused and continued to insist that Terri's feeding be stopped. She had no terminal illness. She was simply a disabled woman who needed extra care that you weren't willing to give.

I speak to you today on behalf of the tens of millions of Americans who still wonder why. I speak to you today to express their anger, their dismay, their outraged astonishment at your behavior in the midst of this tragedy. Most people will wonder about these questions in silence, but as one of only a few people who were eyewitnesses to Terri's dehydration, I have to speak.

I have spoken to you before, not in person, but through mass media. Before Terri's feeding tube was removed for the last time, I appealed to you with respect, asking you not to continue on the road you were pursuing, urging you to reconsider your decisions, in the light of the damage you were doing. I invited you to talk. But you did not respond.

Then, after Terri died, I called her death a killing, and I called you a murderer because you knew - as we all did - that ceasing to feed Terri would kill her. We watched, but you had the power to save her. Her life was in your hands, but you threw it away, with the willing cooperation of attorneys and judges who were as heartless as you were. Some have demanded that I apologize to you for calling you a murderer. Not only will I not apologize, I will repeat it again. Your decision to have Terri dehydrated to death was a decision to kill her. It doesn't matter if Judge Greer said it was legal. No judge, no court, no power on earth can legitimize what you did. It makes no difference if what you did was legal in the eyes of men; it was murder in the eyes of God and of millions of your fellow Americans and countless more around the world. You are the one who owes all of us an apology.

Your actions offend us. Not only have you killed Terri and deeply wounded her family, but you have disgraced our nation, betrayed the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and undermined the principles that hold us together as a civilized society. You have offended those who struggle on a daily basis to care for loved ones who are dying, and who sometimes have to make the very legitimate decision to discontinue futile treatment. You have offended them by trying to confuse Terri's circumstances with theirs. Terri's case was not one of judging treatment to be worthless - which is sometimes the case; rather, it was about judging a life to be worthless, which is never the case.

You have made your mark on history, but sadly, it is an ugly stain. In the name of millions around the world, I call on you today to embrace a life of repentance, and to ask forgiveness from the Lord, who holds the lives of each of us in His hands.

The South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families coalition filed with the state to begin collecting the 16,700 signatures needed to put the issue before the voters in November, Deputy Secretary of State Chad Heinrich said.

If the petition drive obtains the needed signatures by June 19, the law would be put on hold until the voters decide on its fate in the November election. If not enough signatures are gathered the law would go into effect July 1, leaving opponents with the option of challenging it in court.

"When you take things to the courts you don't have the opportunity to engage the public in the process. You don't have the ability to build a movement," said Planned Parenthood spokeswoman Kate Looby.

In Tennessee, doctors performing abortions on girls younger than 13 years old would be required to preserve a sample of the fetal tissue for law enforcement under a bill passed by the Senate on Thursday. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation could use those samples for DNA tests to help prosecute rapists under the Child Rape Protection Act which passed on a 29-0 vote.

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Roy Herron, would require records be kept of the names and residence of the victim and parent or guardian. A doctor who violates the proposed rules would face a $500 civil penalty for the first violation, a $1,000 civil penalty for the second, and a misdemeanor for the third.

In the episode titled, "Secrets and Files," Christina, a young, single mother of an infant, is murdered. Investigation reveals that she was still a virgin, but that she had in fact given birth to the baby. How did Christina get pregnant?

Grissom and CSI Willows find out that Christina had been implanted with an "extra" fertilized embryo through a pro-life agency called Project Sunflower. Not surprisingly, the program negatively portrays the agency's director. When Investigator Willows argues with her over the beginning of life, Dr. Grissom presents his argument. He quotes Leviticus 17:11: "Life is in the blood." When blood enters the embryo on the 18th day after conception and the heart begins to beat, it becomes alive, he explains.

According to his argument, there is an 18-day "grace period" when abortion should not be condemned.

However, Scripture has to be taken in context. The full passage in Leviticus 17 reads, "For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul". This reading makes it obvious that the Biblical reference is about sacrifice and atonement, not about when life begins.

REAL MEN - good men - take responsibility for the children they father. If they get a woman pregnant, they do the right thing: They stand by her. They support their child. They don't try to weasel out of a situation they co-authored. They shoulder the obligations of fatherhood, even if they hadn't planned on becoming a father.

In 1985, RU-486 was a very bad idea that was being imported to America from France. Today it is simply another tool in the arsenal of weapons being used to kill innocent preborn children - children who are perceived to be annoyances, inconveniences or simply problems in need of easy solutions.. The mantra of "safe and legal" has shrouded the ugly facts about abortion for years now. These most recent deaths have been accepted as part of the price a culture must pay when it persists in refining methods for aborting the results of people's unwillingness to accept responsibility for their actions. Not only do we hear very little about the mothers who die because of abortion, we also hear very little about any of the side effects of RU-486 - side effects that are unhealthy for some, deadly for others.

Minnesota legislators have approved a measure backed by pro-life groups that would make sure patients like Terri Schiavo are not denied food and water that could lead to their death. The bill they approved would allow patients to continue receiving it even if they cannot express their own wishes.

"There are no people with physical defects in North Korea," Ri told members of the New Right Union, a group that partners human rights activists with North Korean refugees.

According to a Reuters report, Ri said disabled babies were killed in hospitals or homes and quickly buried. He indicated the North Korean government encourages the practice to "purify" its population and get rid of people who are "different."

Indiana Republican Mark Souder wrote a letter to NIH after the publication of the New Zealand study seeking its "advice on searching out the best US research data on the effects of abortion on women in the United States."

Souder asked whether any comparable studies existed in the United States.

The NIH responded that they had "not funded any prospective longitudinal birth cohort studies on the effects of abortion on mental health." Regarding the 25-years worth of data collected in New Zealand, the NIH said that they were "not aware of any similar data sets that currently exist in the United States."

Souder also asked the NIH "what line of research do you suggest NIH consider funding" to address the question of abortion's effect on women's mental health. The NIH responded by saying they recently began soliciting proposals for research on women's mental health during and following pregnancy. According to Patrick Fagan, the William H. G. Fitzgerald Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, such postpartum research would not really encompass the kind of research that is needed to understand the relationship between abortion and mental health. "It's slightly off topic," he said.

Fagan said the letter from the NIH amounts to a startling admission of not only ignorance but indifference on the question of abortion and depression. "On the single biggest social change in this country's history the government research bodies and their social science agendas have studiously avoided studying its effects," he said. "The NIH letter says we have no good data, we cannot compare with anybody else's data and we don't have any specific suggestions for acquiring this data. In other words, we are blind and intend to stay blind."

A new survey finds that Americans are pro-life across the board on numerous abortion-related issues. The poll found Americans support every pro-life law considered on the state and national level and believe life begins at conception.

A woman who was in an abusive relationship tells of how she was coerced into having three abortions-- by her husband:

I was taken home, dropped off, took up-stairs (could not climb up or down stairs), and left to lay alone for 6 hours.

Finally, my husband comes home -- drunk, dirty and greasy -- and knelt down beside my bed and said, "Honey you do know I could never hate you for keeping something we created while making love, don't you?"

We went back for an assessment with the tumor board today. Aunt Renee got a routine blood test done to make sure she is cleared for the next round of chemo. We saw a young American-Chinese professor, Dr. H, whom I like instantly. One of the MOs examined my aunt and found a mass near her left shoulder, just above the chest. We panicked. Prof. made some calls to Radiology and then called in one of the MOs who had examined my aunt before. There were some inconsistensies in her CT scan report too. After a quick discussion, Prof. cleared us for chemo but arranged for another ultrasound. So, second round on Thursday. Meanwhile, my aunt is having a hard time dealing with the painful ulcers in her throat, plus the hair's falling off faster (think Beetlejuice) than we anticipate. I say, bring on the fancy headpieces!

If anyone have any chemo-friendly home remedy about the ulcers (believe me, I've tried chinese medicine but it still doesn't help), do let me know.

A female nurse held my left hand as the doctor prepared my body for violation. It felt like my insides were being torn in two. I cried silently when the vacuum came on and I felt its pull. I passed in and out of consciousness from then on. The pain was still there, but sounds and smells became indistinct. I remember saying "is it over yet?" The nurse said "soon" and I drifted away again. When I woke up, I was on a gurney, draped with a sheet in the recovery room. My stomach was cramping and I was lightheaded. My womb felt vacant. There was a girl on my left and another on my right. One was still sleeping and the other was wailing for her dead baby.

The Missouri state House voted this week to prohibit taxpayer funding of contraception for poor women and to not allow state family planning clinics to refer women to other facilities, such as abortion businesses. Republican Rep. Susan Phillips of Kansas City said people can pay for contraception with their own money. In place of the contraception funds, she diverted the money to pregnancy centers around the state. Rep. Bob Johnson offered an amendment to reinstate the funding, but the House defeated it 100-53. Right to Life and the Missouri Catholic Conference supported Phillips' initial proposal, which lawmakers approved on a 96-59 vote.

The Washington Department of Health plans to set up a web site specifically to catalog the living wills and advanced directives on file from state residents. Gov. Chris Gregoire signed a bill on Friday creating the web site. Residents can rescind the documents or doctors can access them at any time. Assisted suicide advocates backed the idea saying it would prevent doctors from giving lifesaving medical treatment to those who don't want it. The web site would also help make sure patients who want to be properly treated wouldn't be denied medical care.

So halfway along the way things happened. I woke up. Nothing lasts forever. People changed. I changed. I grew up. That's what happened, A.

And boy, it did feels weird seeing you again. The thing about you. The way you smell. The way you look at me.. That odd familiarity. I almost forgot I am different now. Maybe in some small ways I did missed you. But things never felt the same after Jay. And I'm sorry.

On this day a year ago, the world watched with sadness and alarm as Terri Schindler-Schiavo began a long, painful and barbaric process of a court-sanctioned execution by starvation when her feeding tube, which provided her nutrition and hydration, was removed by her husband, Michael. Despite our protests, we watched helplessly as her life ended thirteen days later. Terri's death was a dramatic wake-up call to the rest of us. It made us stop and reflect on the God given intrinsic dignity and value of each human life.

Today we remember Terri. We remember that she was somebody's daughter, sister and friend. And as we move forward to confront the culture of death, we remember that all lives are precious and should be protected, respected and loved, regardless of their capabilities.

Due to health concerns about infection rates and adverse events, we are updating our medical protocol for medication abortion.

Our health centers will no longer recommend the option of administering misoprostol vaginally (misoprostol is the second drug in the two-drug medication abortion regimen). Patients will now receive misoprostol orally or buccally (where the pill is placed between the cheek and gum and dissolves). This change in protocol is effective immediately.

In 2003, Oxford University researchers found a link between the pill and cervical cancer. Researchers from Cancer Research UK's epidemiology unit in Oxford reviewed 28 studies and found that the longer a woman took the pill, the greater her risk of developing cervical cancer. They found a 10% increased risk for women taking the pill for 5 years or less, 60% for 5 to 9 years' use, and 100% greater risk (i.e. double the risk of a non-pill-using woman) if they had taken it for at least 10 years.[..]

In July 2005 The World Health Organization said that the birth control pill is carcinogenic and is associated with increases in cervical, liver and breast cancer.

"At this time we are investigating all circumstances associated with these cases and are not able to confirm the causes of death," the Food and Drug Administration said in an advisory to the public.

Four previously reported deaths were linked to complications from a bacterial infection that developed after the women took the abortion pill, which is sold by privately held Danco Laboratories.

In the two new cases, it is unknown if the women had bacterial infections, and if so, whether they were infected with the same rare bacterium identified in the earlier deaths. The bacterium is called Clostridium sordelli.

That brings the total number of women who have died in the United States up to seven and the abortion pill has injured at least 850 more. How many more women will have to die before they would pull the drug off the market?

Guess what? Smelly just pee-ed over my mac (hell, I almost had a heart attack!)

Ack, I had to pull out the keys one by one to clean it. Half of my keyboard wasn't working just over an hour ago, but now almost all seems okay except one. If anyone can tell me what else I can do to fix that, pretty please with sugar on top let me know.

Across the country, anti-choice politicians are creating a gauntlet of legislation that attempts to put roadblocks between women and reproductive healthcare. Currently, nationwide, there are approximately 850 pieces of state legislation related to choice - only a small minority of which support women's access to reproductive health services.

Isn't it ironic that those who want to ban abortion do not support the very programs and services that reduce the need for abortion? California has demonstrated what happens when you expand access to contraception and sex education - unintended pregnancy goes down, teen births go down, the number of abortions decline, families are healthier, taxpayers save money.

Americans increasingly believe that it's not enough to be legally free to do and live as you please - your choices must also be exempt from judgment and evaluation. In other words, you have a moral "right" not to feel bad about your "lifestyle" choices. This includes not having to think about the social consequences of these choices.

... but when all choices are deemed equally worthy of respect and stigma is regarded as a kind of hate speech, the likelihood of folly increases almost exponentially. By the time the consequences of certain choices become apparent, it's usually too late to do anything about it: the damage is irreversible or the choices are regarded as inviolable.

This film will focus on the horrors of the 21st Century... It will be political, and it will be provocative. It will begin with you playing a hopeful, young, religious woman seeking happiness and fulfillment. It will conclude with you shaving your head and having an abortion.

Please note that all actresses must be willing to have an actual abortion, and be willing to have the procedure filmed . I believe that this sacrifice will make a powerful message about the inhuman, fascist world we are beginning to see.

Thelma Underberg, director of the regional pro-choice movement, has been fighting to uphold abortion rights for more than 40 years. For Underberg, professional and economic equal opportunity and a woman's right to choose are inextricably linked. When the Supreme Court passed Roe vs. Wade in 1973, enabling women to obtain abortions legally anywhere in America, Underberg celebrated. "We thought we had won," she says.

But now, sitting in her windowless office, she says she doesn't understand the world anymore. The 74-year-old has three children, four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, and she is active in her church. Yet while she outwardly resembles her opponents in the pro-life camp, she refuses to speak with them. "You might as well be talking to a wall," she says.

Statistics Canada today released information that 103,768 babies were aborted in the year 2003 in Canada. This death toll is added to the nearly three million slaughtered since 1969. There was a slight decline in abortions committed mostly among teen-aged girls, StatsCan reported.

"Statistics are cold numbers but each one of these precious babies before birth are human beings who were systematically dismembered by doctors and this was paid for by the taxpayers," said Mary Ellen Douglas, National Organizer of Campaign Life Coalition. "The death of each of these babies has been recorded in the Book of Life long before they were counted by StatsCan. The fact that the numbers are lower among teenage girls is encouraging, perhaps, but the final figures are staggering," she stated.

Among teen-aged women, the abortion rate in 2003 was 14.5 per 1,000 women under the age of 20, down from 15.7 the year before. The abortion rate for teen-aged women has declined gradually since 1997 when it was 18.4 per 1,000 women under the age of 20.

The crude birth rate for teen-aged women has also continued to fall. In 1997, there were 16.8 live births per 1,000 women under 20. By 2003, this had declined to 12.1.

The number of induced abortions per 100 live births decreased to 31.0 in 2003, from 32.1 in 2002.

Induced abortions continue to be most common among women in their twenties, who accounted for 53% of all women who obtained an abortion in 2003. On average, 26 women out of every 1,000 in their twenties obtained an abortion.

Induced abortion rates remained the same or increased for residents of most provinces and territories except for New Brunswick, Ontario and British Columbia, where the rates decreased.

I would say the really bad cramping had been going on for something like an hour, no bleeding whatsoever, when I went to sit on the toilet again. I had been rocking back and forth for a few minutes when I felt this bizarre kind of schlorrp inside, and then a few seconds later, something quite large fell out of me and into the toilet. The cramping immediately let up to what I'd classify as normal-to-annoying period cramps. I sat there for a few minutes to make sure nothing else ginourmous was going to come out, cleaned myself up and got up.

When I turned around, there wasn't a lot of blood in the toilet--just one roughly lemon-sized clot, and next to it, something that was most definitely not clot-colored. I leaned over and squinted at it, and holy shit, there was a freaking embryo in my toilet! They had told me that I probably wouldn't be able to see anything--that anything recognizable probably wouldn't show up unless I was more than eight weeks along, and I was only seven. But this thing, even seeing it in the toilet, was undeniably the embryo. I would say it was just a little bit longer than the diameter of a quarter.

So I found a brush, scooted the embryo up and out of the water, and put it on a square of toilet paper so I could look at it (and threw the brush away). I didn't know what to think about it at first, but the more and closer I looked at it, the more I thought it had to be the single neatest thing I had ever seen. I didn't want to touch it because it looked so gelatinous, like I might accidentally pop it. But I was looking at it and seeing the teeny face (it was at the point where it has the huge flat nose and looks kind of like a puppy) and the little webbed flipper feet and the huge black eyes, going "HOLY CRAP THIS THING IS FREAKING AWESOME." I called Austin up to see it, and he wasn't quite as giddy about it but he still wanted to see it. Apparently he didn't realize it would have fingers and toes and all of that so soon.

The research published in the journal Neurology found a "significant association between headache and reported use of estrogen-containing oral contraceptives in premenopausal women, both for migraine and for non-migrainous headache." Women using the abortifacient were 1.4 times more likely to suffer with migraines and 1.2 times more likely to suffer with non-migraine type headaches.

Slowly, as though coming to terms with buried sexuality, the abortion-rights leadership is groping for a way to think and talk more frankly about the morality of ending unborn life.

In part, this process is being driven by political defeat. In part, it's being driven by the truth of women's experiences. In part, it's a matter of younger women taking over the movement, uninhibited by old fights and fears. And in part, it's a matter of reflection by some who fought those fights but see how times have changed. Abortion no longer symbolizes freedom and women's rights as it did in the 1960s and 1970s, one old-timer observed; the movement must ask how abortion fits into its mission, not the other way around. Another veteran warned her colleagues that fetal life has become "the elephant on the kitchen table": If you can't acknowledge it, people will tune you out.

Chen who exposed China's forced abortions and sterilisations, has been under house arrest for weeks. Chen, his older brother and cousin were taken away Saturday night in a police van and other vehicles as they were on their way to file a police report, said his wife, Yuan Weijing. She said they have not been heard from since then.

The American Medical Association and seven other medical groups say that today's legal abortions do not cause either physical or psychological harm. An abortion is safer than having tonsils removed.

Rev. Peara, perhaps you would like to turn your attention to Christin Gilbert, Tamia Russell and Holly Pattersonetc. for a while? These young women (Christin was 19, Holly 18 and Tamia was only 15.. damn) all died from "safe and legal 'safer-than-having-tonsils-removed' abortions".. think you might want to "hang on" to those memories too?

The study-authored by Stacey A. Missmer of the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health and a team of researchers here and in Texas-correlates the over-consumption of corn tortillas with neural-tube defects (NTDs) in unborn children. Often debilitating and sometimes fatal, NTDs such as anencephaly and spina bifida have been linked directly to the tortillas and other corn products in the diets of expectant mothers living along the Rio Grande.

Missmer and her associates isolated fumonsin, a fungal toxin often found in American corn crops, as the likely cause of these infants' cranial and spinal malformations. The study, conducted on mothers of babies born from the early 1990s to 2000, determined that overexposure to fumonsin inhibits fetal ability to absorb folic acid, a compound known to prevent NTDs.

Co-author of the study, Lucina Suarez, who works with the Texas Department of State Health Services, said the implications of NTDs can be fatal.

'Mary', a Melbourne woman, was advised by her doctor to "terminate that fetus" after an ultrasound revealed she was carrying twins (the second baby was very small, which means the baby was likely to have gross abnormalities). She refused and later gave birth to "a perfect little boy"..

Forget the political jockeying by pro-lifers to gain a foothold with moderates. Never mind laws on parental notification and consent in the name of family involvement. Or attempts to ban one abortion procedure at a time. Or laws to mandate misinformation and waiting periods.

Until now, the anti-abortion right has not only tried to frame itself as moderate, it has dressed up in woman-friendly camouflage. It has touted research that makes one false claim after another linking abortion with depression and breast cancer. It has cast women as the hapless victims of abortion and portrayed its own side as protectors.

When one talk about abortion depression, this story always sticks out of my head. Of course if Ellen Goodman had even bother to do her research or simply stop and listen to these voices, she wouldn't be in such denial.

Only the abortion rights movement has a genuinely positive agenda, the protection of a woman's right to make her own decision about an admittedly thorny moral issue whose implications are intimate. The emotional force driving pro-lifers is profoundly negative; alas, it is our negative emotions that usually pack the most punch. The anti-abortion movement is fired up with loathing - for permissive, Godless lefties who don't even get nervous when threatened with eternal damnation since they don't believe in it (which must be terribly frustrating). Thrilled with the sudden realignment on the supreme court, the right is power-mad, and relishes the prospect of telling the heathens what they can and cannot do. This is a very personal showdown, but it is a showdown between folks who are generally at least five feet tall. The babies are useful tools, but emotionally irrelevant.

How do they do it, the ones who make love without love? Beautiful as dancers, gliding over each other like ice-skaters over the ice, fingers hooked inside each other's bodies, faces red as steak, wine, wet as the children at birth whose mothers are going to give them away. How do they come to the come to the come to the God come to the still waters, and not love the one who came there with them, light rising slowly as steam off their joined skin? These are the true religious, the purists, the pros, the ones who will not accept a false Messiah, love the priest instead of the God. They do not mistake the lover for their own pleasure, they are like great runners: they know they are alone with the road surface, the cold, the wind, the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio- vascular health--just factors, like the partner in the bed, and not the truth, which is the single body alone in the universe against its own best time.

Researchers at Baruch College at City University of New York studied the records of teen abortions and births for the two years before the Texas law took effect on Jan. 1, 2000, and for three years afterward.

Abortion rates dropped for girls ages 15 through 18, even though the 18-year-olds were not subject to the law. But the drop was more pronounced among the younger girls. Their rates fell 11% to 20% more than the rate among the 18-year-olds did.

"The law has definite behavioral effects," said lead researcher Ted Joyce, a Baruch professor of economics.

In the study, birth rates declined for all ages in the 15- to 18-year-old group. At the same time, the abortion rate among 18-year-olds fell from 27.7 abortions per 1,000 girls before the law to 25.8 afterward. The rate dropped from 18.7 to 14.5 among 17-year-olds; 12.1 to 9.0 among 16-year-olds; and 6.5 to 5.4 among 15-year-olds.

Texas state Sen. Florence Shapiro, who sponsored the notification law, said the findings show that more parents are becoming involved in their daughters' "life-altering decisions."

Pro-lifers have gained ground over the last decade and a half by pursuing a savvy incremental strategy. That strategy puts the end of Roe within sight. If Roe falls, pro-lifers should then try to persuade the public in each state to prohibit most abortions. After that, they should try to persuade them to prohibit abortion in the case of rape and incest. To try to collapse this multi-stage process into an instant is to ignore social and political circumstances, and to throw away patiently and painfully won political victories for the sake of an emotional gesture.

The most effective response to Roe is not to pretend that it does not exist. Some of our pro-life allies who favor enacting these laws now - as opposed to waiting until Roe is gone - wave aside the practical objections by saying that it is never the wrong time to do the right thing. That is true. But making it easier for pro-choicers to win the abortion wars is not the right thing to do.

They put me in a room no bigger than a powder room with a chair and a little cart of gowns. Told me how to get dressed and they would be back for me. It felt like I was sitting in there for 4 hours... I never ever cried so hard in my life. I almost ran out of there and couldn't go through with it. My boyfriend was sitting on the otherside of the wall. I wanted him to come get me and say, no let's not do it!!!!!! I know that he was scared too. I was crying so hard I thought I was going to be sick... I was brought into the procedure room and my legs were strapped down. The anesthesiologist came in to hook me up. I started crying and crying and crying, the dr. came in and introduced herself and asked me my name and what I was there for. I was crying so hard I couldn't speak my name. I just wanted someone in that room to ask me, do you really want to go through with this? I wanted SOO bad for someone to say, "you don't have to do this" No one did and I felt soo trapped and scared and was crying soo hard, I tried so hard to say "No, STOP! I don't want to do this!!!"... Next thing I knew I was in the recovery room. It was over. I felt like a piece of sh*t.

Baby MB has spinal muscular atrophy - a genetic condition which leads to almost total paralysis - and cannot breathe unaided. The child's doctors say the severe muscular atrophy he was born with gives him an "intolerable quality of life."

His parents are fighting the hospital's bid for permission to withdraw ventilation from the 17-month-old.

Dr. Sam Epstein, author of Cancer-Gate: How to Win the Losing Cancer War and Professor of Environmental and Occupational Medicine at the School of Public Health, University of Illinois at Chicago, told the CBC's Marketplace that exposure to the hormones estrogen and progestin, as found in the pill, increase breast cancer risk.

Marketplace author Wendy Mesley, herself a breast cancer survivor, explained that the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer last year re-classified hormonal contraceptives as carcinogenic to humans.

Dr. Chris Kahlenborn, M.D. demonstrated that a woman who takes birth control pills before her first child is born has at least a 40% increased risk of developing breast cancer and a woman who has taken the pill for four or more years prior to the birth of her first child has a 72% risk factor in developing breast cancer. Dr. Kahlenborn's book, "Breast cancer: Its link to abortion and the birth control pill," published by One More Soul, is based on six years of study and a meticulous analysis of hundreds of scientific papers and other sources.

"This extreme ban will threaten the health and lives of women in South Dakota," said Talcott Camp, Deputy Director, ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project. "History has shown that when women are denied access to abortion care they may resort to desperate measures. Politicians in South Dakota have turned their backs on the women of their state."

A new poll finds a majority of Americans are opposed to a new abortion ban in South Dakota because it does not contain exceptions for rape and incest. The Fox News poll reveals respondents do not favor the overwhelming majority of abortions.

A nurse told the mother of Haleigh Poutre during a hospital visit on Tuesday that the severely beaten Westfield girl, whom officials once wanted to let die, has been able to eat scrambled eggs and cream of wheat, and has tapped out drum rhythms during physical therapy, according to the mother's lawyer.

We will never recognize the true value of our own lives until we affirm the value in the life of others, a value of which Malcolm Muggeridge says: "... however low it flickers or fiercely burns, it is still a Divine flame which no man dare presume to put out, be his motives ever so humane and enlightened."

I told her that the most important thing for her to know was that I would stand by any decision she wanted to make. I would support her and the baby to the best of my ability if she wanted to continue the pregnancy and try to make a go of things. I would support her if she chose to carry the baby to term and then place it for adoption. I would support her if she chose to end the pregnancy with an abortion. I would not judge her decision or try to make her change her mind. Whatever she chose would be the way it would be.

Neither of us wanted to be parents. We had neither the experience nor the financial ability to offer a child a decent life. Hell, we still hadn't finished high school. We talked about how choosing to keep the baby would not only put severe restrictions on the future life of a child, it would effectively end our own growth and progress towards adulthood before it had even begun. Instead of creating a new life, we would be destroying three.

Politically, legally, and technologically, the 33-year-old court decision is increasingly obsolete as a framework for managing decisions about reproduction. But pro-lifers can't launch the post-Roe era, because they're determined to abolish its guarantee of individual autonomy, and the public won't stand for that. Only pro-choicers can give the public what it wants: abortion reduction within a framework of autonomy.